The cheapest mastering limiter EVER...

[black sugar]

Clipping. It's free.


In this thread, a bunch of ME's do a blind listening test and some of them preferred straight freaking digital clipping to a hardware Waves L2 and TC Finalizer:

http://recforums.prosoundweb.com/index.php/t/3166/0

Crikey. My favorite line: Zero attack, zero release!


One of those that preferred the clipping was none other than Bob Katz:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/A...22/sr=2-1/ref=pd_ka_b_2_1/103-8130826-1455001


In this other thread it's mentioned that some guys route their masters out and back in through a d/a and clip the input on the return:

http://recforums.prosoundweb.com/index.php/t/3711/0


Have any of you ever heard of this? I mean it's totally feasible because limiters can flat top the hell out of things anyway, which is basically a clip with some nifty math that creates artifacts to disguise it. Digital lipstick on a digital pig. (I'm gonna use that for an album or song title, so don't even think of it!)

One of the main arguments made against the clipping technique is that you might have problems playing it on some CD players if you were to actually press it. I would argue you could just do a -0.03db volume reduction on the file and there you go.

I'll have to try it this weekend if I have time. If anyone else tries this, please let me know what you find.


Danke,


Bryan

 

[dbrax]

acually, brad blackwood is my mastering engineer. he does really good work. www.euphonicmasters.com is his site. d. braxton henry

 

[Kazrog]

Wow. Something is seriously wrong with the mastering world. Clipping is bad umkay.

 

[evildonkeymaster]

Wow. Something is seriously wrong with the mastering world. Clipping is bad umkay.

Haha no joke when guys like Bob Katz start failing the "mastering pepsi challenge" and claim the clipped master sounds better than a decent compressed master we have a problem. Things are getting toooooo loud and looks like people are starting to expect and accept it.

I love how Andy's masters sound louder than everyones but are deep warm and powerfull. And if you drop them into a wav/aiff editor and take a look there are very few flat tops generally just an excellently compressed and maximized wave with "fuzzy" tops and bottoms.

 

[Kazrog]

I agree, evildonkeymaster! I have suffered at the hands of maniacal brickwall mastering... and never again will I do this, I hate the sound of it, I hate not being able to use the EQ on a consumer stereo without getting distortion!

 

[JV]

Here's a couple more threads on this topic;

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/showthread.php3?threadid=21080&highlight=


http://www.gearslutz.com/board/showthread.php3?s=&threadid=19824

 

[evildonkeymaster]

I agree, evildonkeymaster! I have suffered at the hands of maniacal brickwall mastering... and never again will I do this, I hate the sound of it, I hate not being able to use the EQ on a consumer stereo without getting distortion!

Amen brother